Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze
The Galleria across the centuries
The foundation of the Galleria dates back to 1784, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo reorganized the Academy of Arts of Design in Florence, founded in 1563 by Cosimo I de ‘Medici, in the modern Academy of Fine Arts. The new institution occupied the premises of the fourteenth-century Hospital of San Matteo and those of the convent of San Niccolò di Cafaggio. The museum was enriched with the suppression of churches and convents ordered by Pietro Leopoldo in 1786 and by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810. However, the decisive event for the history of the museum was the transfer of Michelangelo’s David from Piazza della Signoria, in August 1873. The most famous sculpture in the world waited nine years, in a wooden box, for the construction of the Tribune designed by architect Emilio De Fabris to host it. Today’s Galleria dell’Accademia was established in 1882.
